Online Art Tutorials

I love art lessons, and am forever searching for successful art lessons. You know the ones, where the kids go “Wow!” when you show them what they are going to create, you have the materials readily available and its relatively easy for the class to complete, either using simple but effective techniques or having manageable steps to follow.

There are so many super websites available for art lessons, many that show you a finished product and provide lessons. One of my favourite sites is Artsonia Kds Art Museum, search the gallery to see actual students work.

Lately I have been teaching art lessons using online tutorials and speed videos, and it’s having an AMAZING effect on my 10-12 year olds. Youtube has plenty of these videos, as does Teachertube and ehow. I even do the artwork with the kids, which is a great way to model the trial and error nature of art.

After completing a tutorial from the Tyler’sArtShack Channel on youtube, we emailed Tyler telling him how much we like his work and sent him a link to look at our attempts. What an opportunity – appreciating artworks and communicating directly with the artist! It’s completely changing the way I will approach art teaching, gone are the days of only appreciating the masters. And let’s face it, you just can’t email Van Gogh.

Here is an artwork we used to inspire us before we did our own chalk pastel drawings of a beach.

And here is a video of an artwork that we also tried to create, exploring the technique of making tints and tones of a colour.

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June 6

Spelling Activity Cards

As part of my literacy groups I have a group that works on spelling activities, with their current spelling list. So what do they do each week? I wanted something fun, engaging, easy to organise, no hours of creating worksheets, simple to mark (if any) and independent.

After trawling the internet and thinking creatively I came up with these Spelling Activity Cards. The group gets the card and equipment, brings their spelling book and Voila! Ready made spelling activity.

There are 42 different activities, most able to be used with classes from Year 1 to 6. At the beginning of the year I use them with the whole class, as a modelling activity. It’s helpful to do this the week before they have to do it independently, especially with younger students.

Here are some images of some of the cards and students completing the different activities.